India (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

DK's Eyewitness Travel Guides have increasingly become the most sought after guides by seasoned and novice travels alike. Featuring up-to-date information and spectacular 3-D aerial views -- all photographed in full-color -- each location is shown at its best. Recognized as the most unique and comprehensive travel guides on the market, Eyewitness Travel Guides create the new standard for travels. Every guide in the series is updated annually. 3-D aerial maps help you make the quickest journey from one place to the next. Red star sights help you get the most out of the shortest visit. Full-color photographs are taken specifically for each travel guide, and cut-away & floor plans present unique drawings of historic buildings and museums to show exactly where you are and what you see. All the sights in each area are described in depth with special keyed icons, and there's no need to buy an A-Z guide with our fully indexed street maps. Eat and shop with confidence with our reliable listings of hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops in all areas and at all prices. When it comes to entertainment, Eyewitness Travel Guides contains complete listings of theaters, music venues, cinemas, clubs, sports facilities, and activities for children. A special survival guide shows you how to use local currency, public transportation and telephones through pictures. Before your next trip, pick up one of our best-selling Eyewitness Travel Guides today!

Krishna Jayaraman


The Real India   October 28, 2002
nandini mehta (New Delhi, India)
24 out of 26 found this review helpful

I was delighted to read your review of the Eyewitness Travel Guide to India. As the project editor of this title, I would like to add a few words on why this guide is special. First, it is the only international guide to India written entirely by Indians. This makes it more accurate, more authentic and more full of insights into Indian culture, customs and lesser known aspects of the country than any of the other guides. Apart from the well known sights, this guide also covers fascinating off-the-beaten track places and subjects that most other guides do not cover. Our special features on themes such as religion and iconography, Indian music and dance, and the great epics make these complex subjects easily accessible to a foreign visitor. This guide is like a visual encyclopedia, and is as much a book for the armchair traveller, or an India enthusiast, as for the first time traveller.
Please do however give the correct names for the editors of the 2 Eyewitness travel titles on India. The editor of the Delhi, Agra Jaipur Eyewitness Guide is Aruna Ghose. The editor of the India Eyewitness Travel Guide is Nandini Mehta.
I look forward to reading reviews of these titles by your readers.


It depends on what you need.   December 13, 2006
Leigh F. Ishikawa (MA USA)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful

I purchased this book, along with the latest Rough Guide India. I found Rough Guide to be my guide, and used this book as an inspirational guide.

Summary:
This book is a good supplimental travel guide. If you have a guide, or on a guided tour, this is a nice book as it gives you detailed information like culture and history. But if you are someone who likes to drop into the city and find a place to stay, and figure your way around the area, this is not your book. As some have mentioned, list of hotels, restaurants, and travel means are very limited, if not completely missing. I have to say that this book was not useful to me.

About India:
After traveling through central/northern parts of India, except for rural parts of India, you can pretty much get anything in Delhi or Mumbai that you can pick up in other parts of India, thanks to improvement in transportation, and inexpensive communications. You can often find pay phone to call any part of india for well under 1rs, and almost everyone has a mobile now.

Good:
Nice pictures. When approached by several 'offical tour guides', this book was all that I needed.
Cultural information, such as famous cuisines and so forth are nice. (See below for cons)

Cons:
Slim information on big cities. I stayed in Delhi and Mumbai and information was too little. I would prefer more words then nice pictures.
Some cultural information is pretty uselesss. So you know the cuisine, but how do you know where to eat it in a big city like Mumbai or Delhi.